These are something new! They're decorative plaques, this one has starfish, seaweed, mussels, limpets, and barnacles, the one off to the side is just seaweed, starfish, and the mussel. This photo shows it as it came out of the bisque firing, the orange starfish have a terra sigillata that will stay pretty much that color, the seaweed has green terra sig, but it will mute down some. The barnacles will get another coat of stain so it keeps pretty close to that through the next firing. The bare starfish in the middle will get a thin layer of purple glaze, and the whole thing will have iron oxide over it to pop the details and mute the pastel look. The fun thing about putting oxide over it when it has terra sig fired on is that the terra sig keeps the oxide from soaking in, so it doesn't get stained nearly as much as the background.

This is a bunch of other stuff waiting for finish here, there's orchid pots, bonsai pots and kusamono pots. The dark oval bonsai pots to the right will just get stain, the lighter ones to the left get glaze. Some of the orchid pots will get stain, others glaze, and the kusamonos get some glaze, some stain. The dark kusamonos will just get iron oxide so they'll look like pieces of tree bark -which is what I used to texture them!

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Maryjane Carlson

Clay has always fascinated me, its many colors and textures, the shapes you can create using it, even the feel of it squishing in my hand. Even after years of playing in the mud I find myself exploring new ideas and I hope my work shows this.